Tibet security tight for anniversary

Visitors walk behind a Tibetan Buddhist monk through a doorway at the Yonghegong, also known as the Lama Temple, in Beijing yesterday.

China has beefed up security in Tibet’s capital as the region marks the sensitive anniversaries of a failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule and bloody 2008 riots, residents said yesterday.
Tibet has been under heavy security since the anti-China riots two years ago, but police patrols and resulting tension have both recently increased in Lhasa, residents told AFP by phone.
“There are patrols outside every day and they have been stepped up,” said a staffer at the Jin Cheng International Business Hotel in Lhasa, who gave only her surname Li.
“There are two or three armed police on duty at every intersection.”
An uprising against Chinese rule of the Buddhist Himalayan region erupted on March 10, 1959, but was crushed by China within weeks, forcing the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, to flee into exile.
China calls the defeat of the uprising the beginning of Tibet’s “democratic reform” away from its “feudal” days, but retains an iron grip in the region.
Protests took place on the uprising’s 2008 anniversary, escalating in subsequent days into violent riots across Tibet and neighbouring regions with significant populations of ethnic Tibetans.
China responded with a security clampdown that has been in place ever since.
“It is a little tense. There are a lot of patrols,” said a female staff member at the Xue Yu Hotel.
She said both uniformed and plainclothes security were out in force.
Given the tense situation, the hotel had decided to close until March 21, she said.
The Zaxiquta Hotel also had ceased taking bookings until next week due to the tension in the region, a male staffer told AFP.
“We don’t have many clients now, only four. But we have more than 70 beds,” he said, without giving his name.
He added guests were returning before nightfall but none of the people contacted by AFP reported any government curfew or other security notices being issued.
China on Tuesday accused the Dalai Lama of trying to “create chaos” in Tibet.
“If there were no anti-China forces or no Dalai to destroy and create chaos, Tibet would be better off than it is today,” the region’s Communist Party secretary Zhang Qingli said on a government website.
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama admitted yesterday there was “little hope” of the current Chinese government compromising on the issue of Tibet, after years of vain attempts to win autonomy for his homeland.
Insisting that he sought no political power in Tibet, he also urged Tibetans working within the Chinese administration to visit Tibetan communities in “the free world” to get a better understanding of their aspirations.
In a speech in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala to mark the 51st anniversary of the failed uprising against Chinese rule that prompted him to flee Tibet, the Dalai Lama said he had done everything he could to explain that his goal was Tibetan autonomy within China – and not full independence as Beijing suspects.
“Although I have clearly articulated Tibetan aspirations... we have not obtained any concrete result,” said the 74-year-old Buddhist monk.